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Stranger Than Fiction
A brief daily note of things you might find interesting or useful
You can support the newsletter that you’re reading right now using PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, or purchase a subscription on Substack.Don’t forget to join us in the Stranger Slack for access to source documents and a running feed of news throughout the day. (this link was broken for awhile and has now been fixed)TOP NEWS
U.S. added 1.8 million jobs last month, unemployment rate fell to 10.2%. “On balance, we’re still in a hole,” said Julia Coronado, economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives. “The pace of recovery has really been set back by the resurgence of the virus. Given how far we have to go to re-employ the people who have become unemployed, that’s very discouraging.”
Rising alarm as virus spreads deeper into country “COVID-19 is no longer principally an urban problem: It is present throughout every state, and those infected often don’t know it, leading to “inherent community spread.”
Democrats say Postal chief acknowledged new policies that workers say are delaying mail “Internal Postal Service documents obtained by The Post show postal employees have been barred from working overtime and instructed to leave mail behind if it is processed late.”
In Beirut, known for its cosmopolitanism, explosion victims span nationalities “Lebanon's capital has a magnetic pull for people of many backgrounds, who seek the city or are forced there to find refuge or work.”
Trump Executive Orders Hit TikTok, WeChat Apps “President Trump issued a pair of executive orders imposing new limits on Chinese social-media apps TikTok and WeChat, effectively setting a 45-day deadline for an American company to purchase TikTok’s U.S. operations.”
WHAT I’M READING + WATCHING + LISTENING TO
🎧 LISTEN: Beirut was already in crisis. Then, the explosions. How years of corruption and negligence caused the blasts in Beirut.
School principal threatens consequences for students who share “negative” pictures of their school with crowded hallways and no masks.
In their first week back, students have faced altered classrooms and emergency quarantines. Here’s what they say school is like in the age of Covid-19.
THE COMMENT
“The Wall Street Journal recently reported that investors are “preparing for what they believe could be a once-in-a generation opportunity to buy distressed real-estate assets at bargain prices.” This profiteering is far from “once-in-a-generation” though: It’s straight out of private equity’s playbook during the 2008 financial crisis. We all know what happened then: Homeowners targeted by predatory mortgages lost their homes to foreclosure, and private equity swept in to buy those homes at depressed prices. Communities of color were hit fastest and hardest. Just a handful of years after Black homeownership hit its highest point, the devastating waves of foreclosures wiped out nearly all of the growth in Black homeownership since the Fair Housing Act repealed Jim Crow redlining in 1968.” - Elizabeth Warren and Carroll Fife
THE STRANGEST
THE AV ROOM